Refining the Thousand-Year Snow Ginseng (Part One)

"What a pity!"

Lin Xiao shook his head, swept his gaze over the pass once more, and prepared to leave. But when his eyes passed over a certain spot, he froze.

A Black Armored Guard with gold trim embroidered on his cloak had noticed him at some point and was now staring straight at him. Their eyes met. Lin Xiao stood stunned for several seconds before suddenly turning and walking away.

The Black Armored Guard let out a cold snort and said to the Zushan Pass garrison commander beside him,

"I'll leave the rest to you. I'm going to retrieve the Thousand-Year Snow Ginseng."

The commander respectfully returned the salute.

"Lord He, do as you please!"

Soon, more than a dozen men in black, led by Lord He, left the pass and pursued Lin Xiao in the direction he had gone.

"Damn it, are his eyes those of an eagle? He spotted me even from that far away."

As he moved through the mountains and forests, Lin Xiao glanced back from time to time. Just now, he had leaped onto a tree and seen the dozen or so pursuing Black Armored Guards. They were led by the Black Armored Guard with gold trim, accompanied by two with silver trim, while the rest wore copper trim.

According to the Black Armored Guards' hierarchy, apart from the basic white trim, the second rank used trim embroidered with copper thread. They were equivalent to the junior officers and hundred-household commanders of the Embroidered Uniform Guard in the Ming Dynasty.

The third rank wore black uniforms edged with silver-thread embroidery. They were equivalent to a thousand-household commander—middle-ranking officers.

Above them were the Black Armored Guards whose gold trim was embroidered with gold thread. They were already high-ranking members of the Black Armored Guard, equivalent to a Commandant of the Embroidered Uniform Guard. They were unquestionably at the top, and each was also a top-tier expert. None of them was inferior to Golden Eagle Envoy Wang Zhen's level. The person who had delivered the final blow to Wang Zhen just now had personally been this Black Armored Guard with gold trim.

With such a major figure personally coming to capture him, Lin Xiao felt no honor at all—only annoyance.

Fortunately, his Lightness Skill was exquisite and his cultivation was high. Even after frantically fleeing with his Lightness Skill, he did not feel exhausted. In barely half an hour, he had already put an unknown distance between himself and Zhen Mountain Pass.

Along the way, he deliberately ran through remote places, climbing mountains, crossing waters, and scrambling over streams. Wherever the terrain was difficult, that was where he went. After running for who knew how long, he reached a place so unfamiliar that even he did not know where he was. Everywhere he looked, the land was utterly desolate, with wildly overgrown weeds taller than a person.

Seeing this, Lin Xiao finally let out a breath. With me fleeing like this, they probably can't catch up, right?

Still, with the mindset that caution could keep a ship sailing for ten thousand years, he did not stop and continued fleeing, though he was no longer moving as quickly or charging as wildly as before.

Judging by ancient Huaxia, he should now be somewhere around the northeast. He had no idea exactly where, only that no one had probably lived here for many years. There was not the slightest trace of civilization.

His perfected Flying Heaven Steps carried him lightly over the grass. His feet landed on unknown stalks thinner than fingers. The stalks bent slightly but had not yet been pressed down before he borrowed their force and sprang seven or eight meters away, as though this boundless wasteland were flat ground.

After running for who knew how long, he finally crossed the barren land and reached the vicinity of a small mountain. He hid beneath a large tree on the mountain ridge.

With a flick of his finger, he killed a three-meter-long green-ringed snake coiled in the dark, damp space beneath the tree. After observing the surroundings, Lin Xiao took a brocade box from his robe and opened it. The Thousand-Year Snow Ginseng was still there, its body and every rootlet secured to the back of the box with red thread to keep them from falling off.

The thing looked no different from an ordinary ginseng. It was not shaped like the doll from legends, with a thousand-year-old ginseng said to resemble a child. It was still merely a carrot-like root covered in whiskers—only whiter, larger, heavier, and cold as snow in his hand.

To be honest, if its extraordinary nature could not be sensed the moment one saw it, an ordinary person would probably think it was nothing more than a carrot with a great many roots.

He placed the brocade box on his knees, rubbed his hands, and excitedly pinched off a rootlet. With a gentle tug, it snapped. At once, a strange ginseng fragrance surged from the broken end, rapidly spreading through the surroundings.

"The effects are this obvious?"

He froze for a moment. Seeing something seemingly flowing from the broken end of the rootlet, he quickly stuffed the noodle-like strand into his mouth, chewed it several times, and swallowed it.

The next second, a warm current surged from his abdomen. The medicinal power was even more obvious than when he had chewed and swallowed an entire century-old wild ginseng. He hurriedly circulated his power, absorbing and refining this mighty medicinal force.

"Status panel!"

A light-screen panel visible only to him unfolded before his eyes. His gaze fell on the Potential Points column, and he saw the number jump from 24 to 25. Several seconds later, it jumped from 25 to 26. It increased once every two or three seconds or so, and before long, he had gained a full 11 Potential Points.

"This...!"

Just one inconspicuous rootlet could increase his Potential Points by ten. Lin Xiao's eyes shone as he looked at the Thousand-Year Snow Ginseng in the brocade box. There were probably thirty or forty rootlets in all. Those alone would provide three or four hundred Potential Points. And besides them, there was the main body, thicker than all the rootlets combined. This single Thousand-Year Snow Ginseng contained at least five or six hundred Potential Points.

"This haul made me rich!"

He caught his breath, pinched off another rootlet, stuffed it into his mouth, and began frantically refining this treasure.

In less than ten minutes, he had pinched off and swallowed nearly half the rootlets. The Thousand-Year Snow Ginseng, which had originally looked flawless, now appeared to have half its feet chopped away, making it extremely ugly and lopsided.

At the same time, his status panel had accumulated a total of 231 Potential Points—the first time he had ever accumulated so many.

With so many Potential Points, Lin Xiao could try out some of his previous ideas. For example, he could cultivate the two techniques gifted to him by the Great River Gang's gang leader when he left, first reaching proficiency and then raising them to perfection. Alternatively, he could raise the Three Rivers Heart Method to perfection, then fuse the Yang Sha Scripture and Yin Sha Scripture and jointly derive a divine technique that combined the strengths of all three internal arts while eliminating their flaws.

This was something Lin Xiao had planned long ago. After all, both his Yin Sha Scripture and Yang Sha Scripture had already reached perfection and could not be raised any further. From there, he could only rely on grinding away day after day, circulating his internal power and slowly increasing his cultivation. Its efficiency was far lower than what he had now.

Once an internal cultivation method reached perfection and could no longer be improved, without a superior divine technique, martial artists basically had only one way to increase their power: every day, they circulated their internal power through their meridians according to their method. Each time they completed one Greater Celestial Circuit, their internal power increased by the slightest bit.

They had to cultivate every day, accumulating little by little. This was why, despite the Yang Sha Technique reaching perfection and granting only one hundred and twenty years of power, the old Yang Sha man had possessed a total of one hundred and forty or fifty years of power. The excess had been tempered and refined through years of practice.

Lin Xiao did not want to enter that stage so early. Fortunately, the Yang Sha Scripture and Yin Sha Scripture still had room for further advancement, so he naturally had to make use of it.

For now, he had merely fused the internal power cultivated from the Yang Sha Scripture and Yin Sha Scripture into Primordial Power. His next step was to merge the two divine techniques, combine the strengths of other internal arts, and derive a new, more powerful divine technique.

Besides cultivating for himself, this was also preparation for taking it away from this world when he returned in the future.